2003-05-01 - 10:28 p.m.

Why is the house always empty when you�re at your lowest?

Perhaps it�s a good thing, though suddenly there�s this feeling that there really is no-one to talk to, no-one on the end of a phone even, like you�ve woken up in one of those terrible films from the eighties about nuclear holocausts and for some reason you�re the only survivor and you just end up wandering around some rural valley growing an unfashionable beard and wondering where everybody is. My unprecedented joy at my mum calling a few minutes ago lasted only as long as it took for her to tell me that my grandmother is dying � but hell, if we�re going to approach the misery buffet with a big plate, we may as well fill up on the big stuff as well as everything else, right? I was looking forward to going to Florida tomorrow as a chance to get away from myself for a while because London Pablo is becoming�well, something to get away from, and Florida Pablo could at least afford me a change for a week, but of course now I�m not so sure.

You know when you start to get a bit tubby, and you never really notice, just one day all your seams split when you try to run for a bus or sit down too quickly with your family bucket of fried chicken? Does it work the same way with becoming a complete shit? Do you footle along in life thinking you�re an OK person, a bit misguided sometimes, perhaps, with a peanut for a brain it goes without saying, but essentially not a total wanker, only to wake up one day and suddenly you�re the social equivalent of a dose of gastric flu? All of this on top of the fact that next door�s cat appears to have taken out a personal vendetta on my two fish, Ken and FreemanHardyWillis, so it�s not been the best of weeks.

More in seven days, when hopefully I won�t feel like stringing myself up by my nethers because it�s the only language that despicable cretins like me understand.

The song has it all wrong, man. The not knowing isn�t easy. At all.